Here is one of the more unusual phone photos I got just post-eclipse. Not a good photo but I find it interesting nonetheless.

Feeling lucky we could observe the moment when the corona first appeared. Nearly as dramatic is the first light after the total eclipse. Glad we could enjoy this together (ex son who was at school doing the same).

Quick phone shot of corona

Our meteorologists have been nerding out trying to predict the exact cloud cover for the eclipse. It’s no what the normally do. I imagine only the military needs this kind of accuracy.

So I am totally impressed. They said we’d have some clearing skies when the eclipse got her. An hour ago total overcast. Right now clouds cover less than half the sky. 👏 Hope it stays like this. We’re already settled on the back patio (the weather is really nice).

We live in the prime eclipse viewing path. It is overcast right now but the meterologists are saying there will be some clearing in time for the eclipse 🤞🏼. I think I’ll set up my DSLR to do a timelapse movie of our backyard (not of the sun itself). Our 15 y/o will be at school and they have glasses for all the kids so here’s hoping they’ll have fun viewing it together.

I’m trying to imagine how scary it would be to not know an eclipse was coming in advance.

The weather today is ideal for viewing a total eclipse. Unfortunately it is happening tomorrow and the forecast calls for a lot of cloud cover. Even so it will be a sight to behold and to feel. There will be a noticeable drop in temperature.

If you’re thinking of getting a Roku TV consider what they’re planning:

Roku looks into serving you ads on whatever you plug into its TVs engadget.com/roku-looks-into-s engadget.com/roku-looks-into-s

One of my current web pet peeves: sites that tell me I’m using an adblocker and ask me to disable it but still fail to load even when I comply. I don’t think they’re helping themselves… 😖

I feel beat and my back says “no more!”. I installed new shelving in the under-stair pantry. To do that I had to remove everything that was already on shelving and pull out the old shelving. Then build in the new and reverse the whole process with the old shelving and contents. Definitely feeling my age today! 😣

We went crazy and bought an automated bread maker (Zojirushi). I was a bit skeptical but our first loaf (white bread) turned out amazing. Even the kids and in-law were impressed. I wanted to make a wheat loaf today too but it turns out we lacked one ingredient.

This was an interesting read:

Why Bluesky Remains The Most Interesting Experiment In Social Media, By Far | Techdirt techdirt.com/2024/03/27/why-bl

My adventure in using flex filament continued today. I found this simple model for holding 1/4” screwdriver bits: https://www.printables.com/model/133496-fl

This is a great use of a flex filament because the holes are small enough to snugly hold the bits and at the same time the flex makes them easy to remove.

My previous 3D benchy didn't want to release from the satin PEI sheet so I used textured for this print. It lost adhesion at about 4mm height so I added a brim which worked well.

I bought some Fiberlogy 40D flexible filament for my first attempt at Flex. I used PrusaSlicer’s builtin preset and printed it on my MK4 w/o input shaping. Most of it turned out well and the bow area has a nice flex. The surface has a nicer feel than PLA or PETG. But there is a a defect on the front. I think the angle was too much for the filament or preset. Also the text “3D Benchy" on the stern is less clear. (½)

Overall I'm quite pleased and the distributor, Texas Filament Supply, included data sheets on several other unique filaments. Onwards to "real" prints.👍🏻

(2/2)

I more or less impulsively purchased a spool of Fiberlogy FiberFlex 40 D (flexible filament). I’ve been wanting to try something other than PLA and PETG. I’m curious to see how well it prints on my MK4 and, if it prints well, come up with some actual uses for it.

Microsoft bloat is indistinguishable from malware. Very happy that crap is not part of my life.

Microsoft is once again asking Chrome users to try Bing through unblockable pop-ups engadget.com/microsoft-is-once engadget.com/microsoft-is-once

My son uses one of these - still a great laptop mastodon.social/@macrumors/112

Our dog is 13 years old and storms never used to bother her. But these days thunderstorms cause her stress and she starts shaking. Attempts to comfort her don’t help and maybe she feels worse.

With nice weather we’ve been on the back patio a lot more and have noticed that the WiFi performance on our iPads is very marginal. Speeds are slow at best and sometimes completely stalled out For some reason they are stubbornly trying to use a 5GHz channel when they should have switched to 2.4GHz. So far the only thing that works is to turn the device off and hope it connects to 2.4GHz when it turns on. 😖

Hamburger tacos in process…

Cleaned the outside of our outdoor griddle and now I am re-seasoning the griddle itself. It is a glorious day outside: 80F and 50% humidity is super comfortable on our back porch.

My wife is going to make hamburger tacos on the griddle for dinner today. First time trying that. 😋

Can you solve the mystery?

Periodically this watch face shows up on my Apple Watch, it usually shows up midday. I like it. But I didn’t create it and I cannot find it in the Watch gallery. And it only shows up on the watch face for a quite short period of time before disappearing as silently as it arrived.

Do you know the source of this face? ⌚️

I moved a Docker container to a different Linux box and it couldn’t work. I eventually determined ffmpeg was failing with an rtsp authorization. It ran fine on the previous Linux box. After much futzing around the only difference I could find was the Linux machine it failed on used a network bridge. I deleted the bridge (easy) but the ethernet port stayed disconnected. Thirty minutes later I found how to fix that and voila ffmepg works. No idea why a bridge would break it’s rstp auth. 😖

We’re going to have extreme winter weather tomorrow.

By that I don’t mean super cold and icy. What I do mean it is supposed to be 92F here. Which is about 40F over normal.

Good grief.

A day I’ve long dreaded has arrived. When I moved from my iMac to the Mac mini I started from scratch which gave me the pleasure of not having Visual Studio Code soiling the disk of the mini. But now I need to make changes to an old project built using PlatformIO and hence I am installing VSS. Shiver 😢